Congress adjourns: GOP's 'Omission Accomplished'

Crazy Bozos can't be allowed to prevail

August 4, 2014

Richard Eskow

Campaign for America's Future

ourfuture.org 

 

Our long national nightmare is over – for the moment. Congress has adjourned for summer recess after a session that can safely be described as “historic,” both for its historic lack of accomplishment and the historically low regard in which it is now held by the public. 

 

But let’s be clear: This shameful record is not an example of “government failure.” It is a demonstration of what happens when people who are opposed to government, for reasons of both ideology and self-interest, are given positions of power within it and do not face a sufficiently eloquent and well-organized opposition. 

 

Doing nothing is not a bug for Republicans in Congress. It is a feature. 

 

They appear to be evolving from a rhetorically extreme but ultimately self-interested body – a phenomenon that is disturbing in its moral implications but at least somewhat predictable in its behavior – into something else altogether: a rhetorically extreme group that actually believes its rhetoric. 

 

Sooner or later that will force the GOP’s Democratic opponents to confront the question: What do they believe in, and what will they do to achieve it? 

 

Across the Borderline 

 

Traces of the Republican Right’s steely determination are easily found, in everything from its xenophobic treatment of refugee children to the austerity policies that continue to wrack our economy. They have even begun to mythologize this destructive endeavor, telling the story of their own obstructionism as if it were a noble and historic battle. 

 

Consider the tragic scuttling of the House leadership’s border bill – itself essentially a symbolic gesture – by the ultra-right Cruz wing of the party. That failure left Republicans comically imploring the President to do something about the border crisis “without the need for congressional action” – while at the same time preparing to sue him for taking other actions without congressional approval. 

 

This much-remarked madness illustrates the actions of a party that lacks both a moral and a cognitive compass. But that doesn’t mean Republicans aren’t on a winning streak of sorts anyway. 

 

The immigration failure was the crowning non-achievement of the closing congressional session, and we’re told that it was birthed one night in Sen. Ted Cruz’s office over “We, The Pizza; Starburst; Skittles; Shiner Bock beer; Yuengling; white wine; and three selections of Dr. Pepper.” 

 

(Which Republican was the closet elitist who ordered white wine? And what kind was it – a dry choice like a Chardonnay to go with the pizza, or perhaps a Riesling to complement the sugary fruitiness of the Skittles? Inquiring minds want to know.) 

 

There was to be none of this “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” nonsense for this crowd. Their mission was to shut down even House Speaker John Boehner’s circumscribed funding for the effort they insisted on calling “Obama’s amnesty.” 

 

As symbolism for the Republican right, it doesn’t get much more concise than this profound statement of ungenerosity. Children in need, hungry and endangered and far from home, should evoke sympathetic reactions in a kind and generous people. By rejecting these kids – and attempting to punish President Obama for acts of common decency – we learn who the Republicans are, not just in their policies but in their souls. 

 

Crazy Is as Crazy Does

 

But then, they’ve pretty much told us that themselves. The House’s far-right Republicans – which is to say, a large chunk of them – is blocking a bipartisan proposal to honor and congratulate Pope Francis on his election. These sorts of resolutions have always been uncontroversial in Congress – Catholics vote, after all – but they’re having none of it. Instead, an unnamed Republican official told The Hill that the Pope is “too liberal” for them. 

 

If they say that about the Pope, can you imagine what they’d say about Jesus (who, if memory serves, was a child refugee himself)? 

 

Their rhetoric is truly frightening, as the writers who follow it can attest. Terrance Heath goes spelunking in the dark caves of the human spirit so the rest of us don’t have to. In Congress’ last week alone, Heath found that Boehner called Sen. Harry Reid’s immigration plan “nutso”; Rep. Steve Stockman suggesting that Obama was using the border crisis to push his “Third World view”; and Rep. Michele Bachmann hinting that the president might conduct medical experiments on border children. 

 

And that’s just a sampler. 

 

But when it comes to influencing policy, they’re not as crazy as they look. They’re once again shifting the nation rightward, despite widespread public disapproval of their positions. (See PopulistMajority.org for more on the public’s views.) And that shift applies to both the tone of the debate and the substance of the policy. 

 

There’s the petty obstructionism that manifests itself in the prevention of sensible deeds, large and small. That’s what led Senate Republicans to filibuster the “Bring Jobs Home Act,” for example, a bill that would end tax breaks for shipping U.S. jobs overseas and replace them with tax breaks for creating jobs here. 

 

The GOP routinely prevents a number of common-sense acts like these – acts that until recently would have enjoyed at least some support from members both parties – from getting passed. It’s tragic that these everyday obstructions continue to take place. 

 

A Choice, For a Change? 

 

But the right’s real winning streak, and therefore its opponents’ challenge, lies in its continued ability to shift the public conversation away from the deep-seated, systemic issues we still face. Most Democrats, whether out of discouragement or calculation, aren’t proposing the kinds of bold and transformative initiatives the country still needs – in jobs, infrastructure, trade, workplace rights, wages, economic equality, and other areas. (There are some notable exceptions to this rule.) 

 

The upward transfer of wealth has cost the average American household $7,400 since the year 2000. Low-wage women still bear a terrible financial and job burden, as Jiao (Kitty) Lan observes. Job growth is still anemic, as millions still struggle with joblessness. Students are still burdened with debt. The highway-bill fiasco demonstrates the ongoing toll taken by austerity’s ongoing grip on our politics. 

 

And yet countless liberals still talk about how “crazy” the Republicans are, which raises the question: If they’re so crazy, why are they doing so well? They may even be poised to win the Senate in November. Republicans have learned to lose battles in a way that elevates their political arguments. Where are the equally bold Democratic statements of principle? 

 

Sure, the Republicans in Congress would shoot down those bold progressive policies. But they shoot down the timid ones, too. At least voters would finally have a clear choice between two competing ideologies. The polling shows clearly that, given a choice like that, they’d reject the right. 

 

Say what you will about the extremist Republicans, but they know what they believe in and they’ve found a way to fight for it – despite the unpopularity of their views. That raises a challenge for Democrats: Will they finally offer a clear and unashamedly progressive alternative, one that’s smart both politically and as policy? Given the role money currently plays in our political system, the answer’s likely to be: not until an organized and independent progressive movement demands it.

Stench in the air a 'nauseous reek'

Piglets in a factory farm. (photo: Alexandre Meneghini/AP)

Seeking a Saner Food System, Three Times a Day

By Barbara J. King, National Public Radio

01 August 14

readersupportednews.org
or Philip Lymbery, head of the U.K.-based Compassion in World Farming and his co-author Isabel Oakeshott, a visit to California's Central Valley amounted to an encounter with suffering.

In Farmaggedon: The True Cost of Cheap Meat, Lymbery and Oakeshott write that the mega-dairies of the Central Valley are "milk factories where animals are just machines that rapidly break down and are replaced." At one huge dairy they visited, cows stood idly outdoors, some in shade and some in the sun. No grass cushioned their feet and certainly none was available to eat since, like almost all factory-farm cows, the animals were maintained on an unnatural diet of crops such as corn. The stench in the air was "a nauseous reek."

This same scene was repeated "every couple of kilometres, all with several thousand cows surrounded by mud, corrugated iron and concrete."

The hurt in Central Valley extends beyond cows to humans.

The 1.75 million cows in California generate, according to Lymbery and Oakeshott, more fecal waste than the human population of the U.K. Most of the waste matter flows to lagoons near the farms. But some escapes into the air as gas and into the ground (and water supply) through seepage. Water and air pollution, linked in part to the mega-dairies, is an immense worry for residents of the Central Valley, where, the authors report, children have a rate of asthma nearly three times above the national average and adult life expectancies are lower by up to a decade than the national average.

Similar disastrous circumstances surround mega-piggeries and industrial chicken farms in the U.S. And when those animals are turned into meat, there's enormous wastage. The single saddest statistic I have read in the realm of animal welfare comes from Farmageddon: the amount of meat discarded globally each year is equivalent to 11.6 billion chickens or 270 million pigs or 59 million cattle.

Lymbery and Oakeshott's answer to "Well, what can we do?" hit home for me. Positive change is in our hands, they insist. In the U.K. where they live, the scale of industrial agriculture is not yet huge and, even in countries like the U.S. where it is huge, there's hope. They write: "Avoiding Farmageddon is easy as long as we buy products from animals reared on the land (free-range, organic), favour local producers or retailers that we trust, eat what we buy and therefore reduce food waste, and avoid overeating meat, we can fill our plates in ways that benefit the countryside, our health and animal welfare."

"Easy" sounds too Pollyanna-ish to my ears, but I did love the mantra adopted in the book:

"Each of us has three great opportunities a day to help make a kinder, saner food system through the [meal] choices we make."

It's a simple yet powerful message: At every breakfast, lunch and dinner, we make food choices that move us either toward a saner food system or further away.

My review of Farmageddon, published last week in the Times Literary Supplement, was positive. Even so, I gave Lymbery and Oakeshott a bit of a hard time for avoiding the topic of vegetarianism.

No, I'm not suggesting that everyone become vegetarian (or vegan) or that people who don't are somehow morally inferior. Though I don't eat cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, lambs, goats or cephalopods like the octopus, I do eat fish on occasion and I have recently sampled insect cuisine (cricket cookies and grasshopper tacos). I'm no purist on this topic.

And I remember from last year Tania's "can't we all just get along?" post: none of us benefits by judging others' food habits (or worrying excessively that others are judging ours).

Still, in a book that tackles how we might eat smarter for the environment, for other animals, and for ourselves, I think it's too timid to stop at "eat less meat" and not discuss the "eat no meat" option.

And what about "eat no fish"? On this topic, Farmageddon has something thought-provoking to say, as I noted in my TLS review:

"'Fish farms are the forgotten factory farms under the water', according to Lymbery, 'and one of the fastest-growing sectors of intensive animal rearing.' Cataracts and fish and tail injuries plague the farmed salmon and trout confined in tiny spaces. Around the world, about 100 billion fish are farmed every year, a number that exceeds all the terrestrial farm animals put together."

"The result of all this effort is bleak: consumers eat fatty, chemical-laden fish, and the farmed fish, when they escape (Lymbery describes 'mass breakouts'), harm the wild fish stocks, through competition for food and places to spawn, and outright cannibalism."

About my pescatarian diet, and the type of fish I choose now and again for lunch or dinner, I'm thinking twice.

And three times.

Impeach Obama, We Dare You

(photo: Susan Walsh/AP)

By Gabriel Arana, Salon

01 August 14

readersupportednews.org

Damn the House's insane response: Obama's plan for relief to undocumented immigrants is best way forward

ext month, while Congress is out on vacation for the August recess, President Obama will act on his own — most likely in the form of an executive order — to offer relief to millions of undocumented immigrants currently living under threat of deportation. “I’m beginning a new effort to fix as much of our immigration system as I can on my own, without Congress,” the president told reporters in the Rose Garden on Monday. The announcement comes a week after House Speaker John Boehner told Obama immigration reform would not get a vote in the chamber this session.

You can already see the steam shooting out of Tea Partyers’ ears. As House Republicans prepare to sue the administration — ironically, for extending an Obamacare deadline they’d prefer he’d have blown off altogether — and right-wing groups demonstrate against illegal immigration around the country, the president’s unilateral action is bound to ramp up calls for his impeachment. The move will also likely affect the midterm elections, in which 21 of the 35 seats up for grabs are held by Democrats.

Obama should go it alone anyway — and go big. Under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which started in 2012, the administration has already granted two-year deportation deferrals and work permits to more than 500,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as minors. Under one proposal the White House is considering, their parents would get the same treatment; another would grant relief to those with U.S.-citizen children.

But either of these options would only cover about 5 million of the 9 million who would have qualified for legalization under the immigration bill the Senate passed last year. If indeed the president seeks to address as much of the problem as he can on his own — and since the whole point is to remedy the House’s failure to act on the Senate bill — there’s no principled reason his executive order shouldn’t cover the full 9 million. Any short-term political consequences are far outweighed by the long-term support such a move will garner among Latino voters. But more important, it’s the only sensible policy alternative short of congressional action.

For those unfamiliar with the ins and outs of our immigration system, such broad action on the part of the president may seem like an overreach. But that’s because, while it’s commonly said our immigration system is “broken,” most members of the public have no idea just what a disaster it is. That’s largely because all most of us had to do to become citizens was be born.

At heart, the presence of 12 million undocumented immigrants in the country today is not a failure of enforcement. It’s a policy failure. The last time Congress amended our country’s immigration laws — in 1996 — it failed to anticipate our economy’s demand for unskilled labor. While many other countries have standing commissions that adjust quotas to respond to the economy and broader migration trends, the U.S.’s approach has been to set the rules every 20 years or so and undergo a massive overhaul only once the system is falling apart.

The economic expansion of the 1990s created demand for millions of unskilled jobs, largely in the service and construction industries. But our immigration system only allots a total of 5,000 visas for unskilled workers per year. No, that’s not a typo, and that’s not per country — that’s overall.

The U.S. does offer an unlimited number of temporary work authorizations for low-skilled workers in the agriculture industry, and up to 66,000 temporary permits for low-skilled workers in other fields. But besides needing a job offer before coming to the U.S., these short-term permits must be renewed every year. They also require you to leave the country every three years. But even the temporary work authorizations are insufficient to meet demand — we reach the 66,000 cap for low-skilled, non-agricultural workers almost as soon as the filing period starts. And the truth is most of those who work in the U.S. for years on end — those who’ve built a life here — will want to stay. Neither of these work authorizations offer you the chance to become a citizen.

So when someone says, “I’m fine with legal immigration; it’s illegal immigration I don’t like,” that should be your first clue they have no idea what they’re talking about. Because for low-skilled workers, we’ve made it basically impossible to immigrate legally. When your Italian or Irish great-grandfather came to America, we didn’t have these crazy restrictions in place.

With economic demand so high and immigration levels set so low, what’s happened? Immigrants and employers alike simply went around the system — and, contrary to popular belief, most people didn’t sneak across the border; they’ve overstayed visas. With economic conditions improving in Mexico and the recession in the U.S., net migration from Mexico has now fallen to zero. But we now have millions of people who’ve lived and worked for decades in the U.S. They have deep ties to their communities, and their children have grown up as Americans. And yet many can’t get a driver’s license or get jobs that aren’t under the table. If your parents brought you to the country as a kid, in most states you can’t get in-state tuition, much less qualify for financial aid. The cliché from immigrant-rights folks is that the 12 million are living “in the shadows,” but it’s no exaggeration — to be undocumented is to live in constant fear of being deported or having a family member deported.

The comprehensive immigration bill passed by the Senate last year tried to address the failure of our immigration system to handle the economic realities of the 1990s by offering those who came to the country without papers a shot at legalization. But House Republicans, in part because they hate President Obama and because they don’t like immigrants all that much, either, have failed to act on the Senate bill. Instead, they’ve called for all 12 million people to be deported — including kids who’ve grown up as American as any citizen.

Quite simply, the president has nothing to lose with Republicans by taking action on immigration on his own. Short of passing comprehensive immigration reform, offering temporary relief to the 12 million is the best way to account for the system’s past failures, which is both the humane thing to do and allows us to focus our resources on dangerous criminals and drug activity. Law-and-order types love to point out that undocumented immigrants have broken the law by coming here, but Obama’s proposed executive action on immigration is a frank acknowledgment that our system is just as much at fault for the mess we’re in today.

AZ 87 resurfacing will impact travel

Will slow traffic south of Sunflower starting Monday (Aug. 4)
Northbound will be affected Mon.-Thurs., southbound Wed.

Pavement improvement work will require lane restrictions along State Route 87 south of Sunflower starting Monday, August 4, according to the Arizona Department of Transportation. Drivers with plans to use SR 87 between the Phoenix area and Payson are urged to allow extra travel time and to be prepared for slow traffic at times.

Northbound SR 87 will be narrowed to one lane in areas between the Four Peaks Turnoff and Sunflower from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Thursday, August 4-7, to allow crews to resurface sections of old pavement between mileposts 206-218.

Southbound restrictions south of Sunflower are scheduled to be in place from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, August 6-7, and continue on Monday and Tuesday, August 11-12.

No work or restrictions will be scheduled in the area on Friday, Saturday or Sunday, August 8-10.

The pavement improvement project's schedule is subject to change due to inclement weather.

For more information call the ADOT project information line at 855.712.8530 or email at Projects@azdot.gov.

10 Biggest Threats to Human Existence

Larry Schwartz

EcoWatch / News Analysis

Published: Wednesday 30 July 2014
nationofchange.org

Half the population suddenly very much resembling zombies—Could these biggest threats really cause human existence?

AMC’s “The Walking Dead” is at the top of the cultural zeitgeist these days, one of the most popular television series on the air. In the show, a virus has ravaged the Earth, killing most of humanity, with the dead corpses rising to terrorize the few remaining living souls. While enormously entertaining, it is not a likely scenario for the end of the human race. Dick Cheney notwithstanding, zombies aren’t real. The end of humanity, however, could be. While it is difficult to envision a world without “us,” there are multiple scenarios staring at us, right here, right now, not far-fetched, that could wipe out all or most of humanity, leaving a wasteland for Mother Nature to reclaim. Here are some of the possible ways the reign of man- and womankind might end, no zombies needed.

1. Global Climate Change

Climate change is the Big Kahuna of all scenarios in which our presence on Earth is ended. Despite what the climate change deniers would have you believe, climate change is real. It is being caused by human beings, with a little help from lots of farting cows emitting methane, plus that giant well of methane lurking under the Arctic ice. As we burn carbon and increase our meat-eating ways, more and more greenhouse gases are building up in the atmosphere. It is pretty easy to see the end game of this scenario. Grab a telescope and look at Venus, a planet with a thick, heat-trapping atmosphere and a surface temperature high enough to, well, melt lead. A few decades ago, climate scientist James Hanson studied Venus, and saw some parallels with what was happening on Earth. What he saw alarmed him, and he testified in Congress in 1988, warning our government that unless we changed our carbon-burning ways, we were on a course for disaster. Hanson got through to a single senator: Al Gore.
Meanwhile, the carbon keeps burning, the CO2 keeps rising, resulting in a slowly rising average Earth temperature despite the occasional freezing cold winter. On average, Earth’s temperature has been rising steadily since the Industrial Revolution unleashed our carbon-burning frenzy, resulting in a slow-moving train wreck. The hottest years in recorded history have occurred in the last decade. Author and environmental activist Bill McKibben outlines the situation:
“The Arctic ice cap is melting [releasing more greenhouse gases], the great glacier above Greenland is thinning, both with disconcerting and unexpected speed. The oceans are distinctly more acid and their level is rising…The greatest storms on our planet, hurricanes and cyclones, have become more powerful… The great rain forest of the Amazon is drying on its margins… The great boreal forest of North America is dying in a matter of years… [This] new planet looks more or less like our own but clearly isn’t.”
Many environmentalists think we have already passed the point of no return. Once we pass a certain threshold, Earth will continue warming even if we do manage to cut our CO2 emissions. What we do know is that, if we don’t begin reducing the amount of CO2 we are releasing into the air, and at least minimize the damage, a planet-wide disaster is assured.

2. Loss of Biodiversity
If we don’t melt ourselves into extinction, another possible route to end times is partly a byproduct of climate change: loss of biodiversity. Human activity is responsible for massive extinctions of countless species on Planet Earth. Environment News Service reported as far back as 1999 that, “the current extinction rate is now approaching 1,000 times the background rate [what would be considered the normal rate of extinction] and may climb to 10,000 times the background rate during the next century, if present trends continue [resulting in] a loss that would easily equal those of past extinctions.”
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a major environmental report released in 2005, reported 10-30 percent of mammals, birds and amphibians on the planet are in danger of extinction due to human activity, which includes deforestation (resulting in habitat destruction), CO2 emissions (resulting in acid rain), over-exploitation (such as overfishing the oceans), and invasive species introduction (like boa constrictors in the Florida Everglades). “This rapid extinction is therefore likely to precipitate collapses of ecosystems at a global scale,” said Jann Suurkula, chairman of Physicians and Scientists for Responsible Application of Science and Technology. “This is predicted to create large-scale agricultural problems, threatening food supplies to hundreds of millions of people. This ecological prediction does not take into consideration the effects of global warming which will further aggravate the situation.”
Amphibians, such as frogs and salamanders, are considered “marker species,” meaning they provide important clues to the health of the ecosystem. Right now, the frog population, as well as other amphibians, has been declining rapidly. In any ecosystem, when one species dies, it affects other species, which depended on the now-extinct species for food and perhaps other necessities. When there is a sudden mass extinction of many species, a chain reaction can cause catastrophic results. There have been five mass extinctions in the history of the Earth, and many scientists are saying we are in the midst of the sixth. “We are entering an unknown territory of marine ecosystem change, and exposing organisms to intolerable evolutionary pressure,” states the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), in the biannual State of the Oceans Report. The next mass extinction may have already begun.” What would that be like?  Well, in the worst one, 250 million years ago, 96 percent of ocean life and 70 percent of land life perished. What can we expect from mass extinction number six? We probably would prefer not to find out.

3. Bee Decline
Bees are dying—a lot of them, due to CCD, Colony Collapse Disorder. “One of every three bites of food eaten worldwide depends on pollinators, especially bees, for a successful harvest,” says Elizabeth Grossman, author of Chasing Molecules: Poisonous Products, Human Health. Plants depend on spreading their pollen to produce food. Bees are pollinators. No bees, no food (or at least much less). As many as 50 percent of the hives in the U.S. and Europe have collapsed in the past 10 years. The suspect in bee deaths is a class of chemicals called neonicotinoids, pesticides used on a massive scale in commercial farming. It is believed the chemicals impair the bees’ sense of direction, preventing them from returning to the hive.
With reduced pollen in the hive, fewer queen bees are produced, and eventually the colonies collapse. The European Commission has imposed a ban on these pesticides after the European Food Safety Agency concluded that they posed a “high acute risk” to honeybees. The United States, however, has declined to join Europe in banning neonicotinoids, citing other possible causes of CCD, including parasites. Meanwhile, as Nero fiddles, Rome is burning and bees are quickly disappearing. It is not hard to imagine a scenario where resulting acute food shortages bring on mass starvation, war and human extinction.

4. Bat Decline
Bees aren’t the only pollinators dying off. Bats, too, are dropping like flies. As a result of deforestation, habitat destruction and hunting, combined with a fatal fungal disease spreading among the bat population called White Nose Syndrome, bats are disappearing at an alarming rate. Besides contributing to the pollination crisis, the dwindling bat population brings about another possible human extinction scenario. As their habitats are destroyed, bats are increasingly crossing paths with the human population, in search of food and shelter. With bats come bat viruses. “It’s very easy to see how pathogens can jump from animals to humans,” says Jon Epstein, at the EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit agency dedicated to conservation and biodiversity. Every year, on average, five new infectious diseases pop up, and about 75 percent of these new diseases come from animals. It is already suspected that human killers like Ebola emerged from the bat population. Might some new human-killing pathogen mutate from bats to humans and decimate mankind?

5. Pandemic
Which leads us to a related extinction scenario: a worldwide pandemic. New diseases emerge every year.  Some have the potential to devastate the population. In 1918, a strain of influenza spread worldwide and killed between 20 and 50 million people—more than were killed in all of World War I. In the past several years, diseases like SARS have come close to igniting into worldwide pandemics, and it is not at all inconceivable that, in our airplane-riding, interconnected world, some other virus could arrive on the scene with the virulence and transmissibility to decimate, if not destroy, the human population. “It is not in the interests of a virus to kill all of its hosts, so a virus is unlikely to wipe out the human race,” says Maria Zambon, a virologist with the Health Protection Agency Influenza Laboratory. “But it could cause a serious setback for a number of years. We can never be completely prepared for what nature will do: nature is the ultimate bioterrorist.”

6. Biological / Nuclear Terrorism
In the interim, there are plenty of down-and-dirty, run-of-the-mill terrorists and the grand prize they all hope to get their hands on is a weapon of mass destruction like a nuclear bomb or a vial of smallpox virus. “Today’s society is more vulnerable to terrorism because it is easier for a malevolent group to get hold of the necessary materials, technology and expertise to make weapons of mass destruction,” says Paul Wilkinson, chairman of the advisory board for the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrew. “The most likely cause of large scale, mass-casualty terrorism right now is from a chemical or biological weapon.The large-scale release of something like anthrax, the smallpox virus, or the plague, would have a huge effect, and modern communications would quickly make it become a trans-national problem. There is a very high probability that a major attack will occur somewhere in the world, within our lifetimes.”
As for the nuclear threat, with increasing numbers of unstable countries like Pakistan and North Korea in possession of atomic weapons, the availability to terrorists seems only a matter of when and not if.

7. Super-Volcanoes
There are volcanoes, and then there are super-volcanoes. “Approximately every 50,000 years the Earth experiences a super-volcano. More than 1,000 square kilometers of land can be obliterated by pyroclastic ash flows, the surrounding continent is coated in ash and sulphur gases are injected into the atmosphere, making a thin veil of sulphuric acid all around the globe and reflecting back sunlight for years to come. Daytime becomes no brighter than a moonlit night.”
This lovely scenario is brought to us by Bill McGuire, director of the Benfield Hazard Research Center at University College London. About 74,000 years ago, the most powerful super-volcano eruption in human history occurred in Indonesia. It was close to the equator, and thus gases quickly passed into both hemispheres. Sunlight was blocked, and temperatures on Earth dropped worldwide for the next five to six years, below freezing even in the tropical regions. A super-volcano eruption is 12 times more likely than an asteroid hitting the Earth. Known super-volcanoes exist in Yellowstone National Park in the U.S. and Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia. And then there are the unknown ones…

8. Asteroid Impact
Recent films like Deep Impact and Armageddon have dramatized this human extinction scenario, an asteroid hitting the Earth. Hollywood is Hollywood, but in 2013, a real-life asteroid appeared without warning in Chelyabinsk, Russia. About 20 meters wide, it hurled into the Earth’s atmosphere at more than 40,000 miles per hour. Only the angle it came in at and its relatively small size prevented damage and destruction on a massive scale. But what would happen if a not-at-all uncommon mile-wide asteroid hit the Earth at this speed? Quite probably it would wipe out the human race. The tremendous explosion it would cause upon impact would fling so much dust into the atmosphere that the sun would be completely blocked off, plant life and crops would die, severe acid rain would kill ocean life, and fiery debris would cause firestorms worldwide.
This has already happened at least once. The likely reason you don’t see any dinosaurs around the neighborhood is that they were wiped out by just such an incident. Donald Yeomans of NASA: “We expect an event of this type every million years on average.”

9. Rise of the Machine
We look to Hollywood again to dramatize our next scenario. The Terminator movies entertained us with killer androids from a future where war was being waged on man by super-intelligent machines. OK, we are not there yet, but as we program more and more intelligence into our computers, exponentially increasing their capabilities every year, it is only a matter of time before they are smarter than we are.  Already we entrust computers to run our stock markets, land our planes, correct our spelling, Google our trivia, and calculate our restaurant tips. In development are robots that look like us, talk like us and recognize our facial movements. How long before they are us, as we download our thoughts and memories into our hard drives, the so-called “singularity?” How long before these machines are self-aware?
Futurist and author Ray Kurzwell believes computers will be as smart as us by 2029, and by 2045 will be billions of times smarter than us. What then? Will they decide we are superfluous? Or maybe we ourselves will decide. Sounds far-fetched, I know, but some very smart people buy into this scenario; people like genius physicist Stephen Hawking: “The danger is real that they [super-computers] could develop intelligence and take over the world.”

10. Zombie Apocalypse
I know. I said zombies aren’t real. But there is a parasite called toxoplasmosa gondii. This terrifying little bug infects rats, but it can only reproduce inside the intestines of a cat, so it evolved a nifty little trick wherein it actually takes over the rat’s brain and compels it to hang out around cats. Naturally, the cat eats the rat. The cat is happy. The parasite is happy because it gets to reproduce in the cat’s intestines. The rat? Not so happy, one would suppose. Why should we care about unhappy rats? Because rats and humans are actually very similar, which is why we conduct so many medical experiments on rats. And humans are infected with the toxoplasmosa gondii parasite. About half the population of the Earth, in fact. Now it so happens that toxoplasmosa gondii  does not affect humans the way it does rats. But what if it did? Viruses mutate. Viruses are manipulated in bio-weapons laboratories. Suddenly half the population would have no instinct for self-preservation. Half the population unable to think in a rational manner. Half the population suddenly very much resembling zombies. Nah. Couldn’t happen. Could it?

More proof climate change is ruining seafood

A crab pot full of red king crabs in Alaska. (photo: AP)

By Joanna Rothkopf, Salon

30 July 14

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Climate change is seriously threatening our fisheries and the communities that rely on them

new study conducted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has bolstered convictions that many marine biologists and climate scientists have had for over a decade: Climate change is seriously threatening the world’s shellfish supply.

The study focused specifically on Alaskan fisheries, known for red king crab and other desirable fare, because the local communities are so reliant on them for their economic well-being.

Researchers said changes in ocean chemistry could make it harder for mollusks and other small creatures to build and keep their skeletons or shells. Previous studies have shown red king crab and tanner crab grow more slowly in more acidic water and that red king crab died in highly acidified conditions.

Communities in southeast and southwest Alaska face the highest risk from ocean acidification because of their reliance on fishing, relatively lower income levels and fewer job alternatives than other parts of Alaska, the report states. For communities with high food and energy costs, ocean acidification could be another hit, the research says.

We are familiar with the effects that excess carbon dioxide has on the atmosphere, but its lesser-known sister reaction, ocean acidification, is one of the most devastating outcomes of climate change. Coined by chemical oceanographer Ken Caldeira in 2003, ocean acidification occurs when carbon dioxide is released from the burning of fossil fuels and enters the ocean, reacting with sea water and forming carbonic acid. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, since the start of the Industrial Revolution (around 150 years ago), up to 500 billion tons of carbon dioxide have been absorbed by our oceans, increasing the average acidity by 30 percent.

Why does it matter? Ocean acidification decreases the availability of carbonate, a material that thousands of species of sea creatures use to form calcium carbonate shells. Without it, we’ll see an epidemic of “global osteoporosis“: shells that are extremely thin and brittle, or that totally dissolve.

Indeed, this threat extends to the majority of the commercial fishing industry: clams, oysters, lobsters and, yes, crabs all depend on their calcium carbonate shells for survival. Larger marine life, such as seals, otters and walruses who eat shellfish, are also in danger.

Alaskan waters are particularly vulnerable to ocean acidification because colder water can absorb more carbon dioxide, and circulation patterns specific to the region bring deep-ocean water to the surface.

NOAA oceanographer and co-lead author of the study Jeremy Mathis warns that although we haven’t seen major changes in our shellfish supply just yet, they are on the horizon. “We could have a 300 percent greater change between now and the end of the century than we have in the past 250 years combined. So the rate of change is what’s accelerating.”

Private prisons: GOP's real border shame

(image: FinalCall.com)

By Ana Marie Cox, Guardian UK

22 July 14

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Private prisons have taken up immigration as a profit center, based on assembly-line 'justice' of the Bush era – and kept alive by Republican presidential contenders who look the other way

igh-profile Republicans, from Governors Rick Perry and Rick Scott to even Chris Christie, have gone hoarse these past few weeks in denouncing the overflow of migrant detention centers at the US-Central American border as "the federal government's failure." All of them have ignored – or blissfully forgotten – that privatization, not government overreach, lies at the heart of America's suppurating arrest and deportation policy.

Despite growing evidence that the private prison industry is neither humane nor cost-effective, for-profit incarceration has increased dramatically in the past 10 years, and nowhere has the boom been more obvious – and had more devastating impact – than along the United States' border.

The tragedy of prison privatization is well-documented. For-profit institutions allows states to pass on overcrowding problems rather than solve them. There is lax attention to government regulations. This is a system designed for the benefit of its owners, not in the best interests of the state – or the prisoners themselves.

But almost half of all detainees held by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and US Marshall Service were held in private prisons as of 2012, and the rate of private incarceration of immigrants has grown at rates hundreds of times faster than the rates at government-run prisons. Go ahead, call in the National Guard and complain about the US border patrol. But the US Bureau of Prisons spent about $600m on private prison contracts in the last fiscal year, as private prisons have become the beneficiaries of ICE’s diversion of illegal immigrants to "civil detainment", or housing for those not suspected of additional crimes.

Indeed, it is President Obama's enforcement of Bush-era deportation policy, not the "amnesty" granted to so-called Dreamers, that's created the overcrowding and hellish conditions that so define the lives of border detainees.

In 2005, the Bush administration introduced bulk proceedings – unrelated immigrants tried and sentenced at the same time – and mandatory detention for illegal border-crossers, under a program known as Operation Streamline. This assembly-line justice, with up to 100 immigrants tried in a single court in a single day, continued under Obama, and eats up the time and resources of immigration lawyers and judges. (No wonder the children waiting at the border today are suing for representation.) Industrial justice leads to industrial detention: Operation Streamline funnels 30% of all those convicted into the waiting beds of detention centers run by one of the county's three largest for-profit prison operators.

Those not caught in the cookie-cutter courtrooms, and found guilty in a traditional hearing process, usually wind up in one of the country's Criminal Alien Requirement facilities. Every single one of them is run by private operators. And so almost every cry for "enforcement first" immigration reform – or "enforcement only" non-reform – puts a dollar into the pockets of private prison companies: In 2005, prior to the Bush administration's swift and harsh border policy, the federal government paid out $400m to GEO and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the two largest gaolers; in 2011 alone, those companies billed the US for $1.4b, with immigrants generating about $250,000 a day. And the long-term outlook is rosy: Federal government spending on immigrant detention in private centers has gone from $760m in 2002 to upwards of $1bn annually today.

In the circular economy of American politics, that money naturally first travels through the coffers of lobbyists and legislators. The private prison industry spent $45m on lobbying in the past decade, much of it going toward legislation that would simply incarcerate more people. With the war on drugs slowing, the industry has taken up immigration as a profit center: Companies contributed to the campaigns of 30 of the 36 lawmakers behind Arizona's "show your papers" law. The industry has also focused its attention on border states – Florida, California, and New Mexico – all of which face overcrowding in part due to waves of immigrants; even if state prison populations decrease, after all, stricter border enforcement creates federal detainees.

Republicans who are not immediately grandstanding on the shoulders of those trapped in private detention centers have posed as simply concerned – and angry at the federal government. But almost each figure blaming government ineptitude is caught up in the insidiousness of private prisons:

• Texas governor Rick Perry has actually bragged about finding common cause with Eric Holder in reducing Texas's prison population, but with Monday's deployment of 1,000 National Guardsman against "criminal aliens," he's on track to undo his legacy of reform – and keep alive the private prison system that works against it.


• Florida governor Rick Scott waded in on the migrant crisis rather gently on Friday, with a letter from his attorney general about children that might be transferred to Florida: "What medical services, if any, were provided," it asked, inquiring about infectious diseases and "those who may have come through the flawed federal system." Of course, that flawed system maybe be paid for by federal government, but at least a third of its detention centers are administered by GEO – which is both based in Florida and a significant contributor to Scott and the Florida Republican party. Just last night, the governor, an enthusiastic and over-promising promoter of private prisons in general, was arm-in-arm with the company's CEO at a $10,000-a-plate fundraiser.


• Chris Christie, quiet of late, simply told Iowans over the weekend that "I have great empathy for that situation." And that the children-at-the-border fiasco exists because "the United States that the federal government has refused to address this issue in any meaningful way." But Christie's tough-on-crime CV includes a close relationship to the euphemistically-named Community Education Centers, the president of which is Christie's former law partner and political advisor. CEC's laxly-monitored halfway houses have been tied to prison escapes and further crimes – including sexual abuse on-site – and it was the only bidder in a state contract to build an ICE facility. CEC is also the owner of Texas's most notorious detention center, where inadequate medical care and labor exploitation are the norm. So, yes, you would hope Chris Christie has "great empathy" for that kind of situation.

The immigration crisis at the border has blessed – or cursed – potential contenders for the 2016 Republican presidential race: the Perrys and Christies and Ted Cruzes and Marco Rubios have an opportunity, right now, to hone their rhetoric around the policy, cleaving a careful line between calls for more forceful border defense and sympathy for those suffering.  (Non-contenders can indulge in the luxury of pure xenophobia.)

But prison and detention privatization, the underlying factor in the ongoing humanitarian tragedy that is immigration policy, presents another obstacle to GOP hopefuls – even as the prison industry itself continues to pump money into politics and wring profit out of the ongoing crisis at the border.